Introduction

Abstract

Introduction C. Damien Arthur WHO WAS ROBERT C. BYRD? How did he command such respect? Why did so many people despise him? How did he come from the impoverished, ravaged coal mines of southern West Virginia to the pinnacle of power in the US Senate? He had no family lineage or legacy to propel him to power. He did not have an educational pedigree to grant him access to the players that mattered. Neither he nor his family were wealthy—quite the opposite. He married young and worked as a grocer and, eventually, as a butcher. Byrd came of age in the southern coalfields of West Virginia, the heart of Appalachia—one of the hardest places to grow up in the United States. He had literally begged for garbage from his neighbors to help feed his family. He often went without socks and shoes. He had walked mile after mile in below freezing temperatures, his eyelids freezing shut, starving and without a coat—anything to be different, anything to forge his own path. He would do anything to not work in the coal mines, like everyone did—a perpetual descent into poverty and a lifelong death trap. He took his southern West Virginia area by storm, fiddling his way into the people's hearts and the ballot box. When Byrd entered public life, he did so without the full support of his party; that party would eventually follow his every move and decision, even during a presidential impeachment. He would lead the Democratic Party for more than a decade. He owned nothing of real value, save a fiddle, which he used to transfix crowds, rapture them to the place they desired most, and pull from them their reluctant trust. He possessed nothing that anyone would want but an unrivaled intellect; he never rested his mind, making him unassuming and a formidable opponent. He came from a place that no one ever wanted to go, a place that people left in droves; he spent his entire life building it up and forcing the government to consider it as a part of the national interest. Byrd was full of desperate, frantic energy and ambition. He frenziedly wanted to live a life worth living. He had worked every single day of his life, harder and more desperately than anyone else who would ever occupy a desk in the north wing of the US Capitol Building. He was always looking to help [End Page ix] people, but he was not afraid to trample an opponent. He could be overwhelmingly comforting and kind, but he was also unrelentingly vindictive when crossed or threatened. As he worked or interacted with crowds, charisma overflowed from him and energy hovered about him. He was recharged by any crowd and attention, instantaneously, inspiring and motivating those same crowds. Yet, senate aides would scurry off the floor before he began speaking so as not to be bored beyond measure. Back home, in his state, he was a master politician. He moved through the crowds as a man of the people, nothing if not one of them. Byrd had a "winning way with audiences," reporters claimed. He worked those crowds like a fire-and-brimstone preacher, charming them, gaining the trust and votes of nearly everyone he met. A columnist said, Byrd was "a person possessing both beauty of thought and grace of language." A newspaper editor said, "He is the most astonishing campaigner ever to travel the highways and byways of Boone county." He also said Byrd secured "the good will of his audience with his violin and then follows with the best political speech to be heard in these parts." Even one-on-one, Byrd owned the moment. He met nearly every person in the district when he was campaigning. He would stand outside the factories, there before they opened and there when they closed, shaking the hands of every man that worked there. He attended every ladies auxiliary meeting, singing and playing the violin—enchanting their hearts. His friend drove him from house to house, every day after his shift as a butcher was over, to politick with the locals. Any person that made eye contact with him...